Rejoining fragmented ancient bamboo slips with physics-driven deep learning

TL;DR

WisePanda is a physics-driven deep learning framework that significantly improves the accuracy and efficiency of rejoining fragmented ancient bamboo slips, aiding archaeological restoration and study.

Contribution

This work introduces WisePanda, a novel physics-based deep learning method that generates synthetic training data for artifact rejoining without manual pairing, enhancing restoration accuracy and speed.

Findings

Top-50 matching accuracy increased from 36% to 52%.

Archaeologists' rejoining efficiency improved approximately 20 times.

Physics-driven data generation reduces the need for manual sample pairing.

Abstract

Bamboo slips are a crucial medium for recording ancient civilizations in East Asia, and offers invaluable archaeological insights for reconstructing the Silk Road, studying material culture exchanges, and global history. However, many excavated bamboo slips have been fragmented into thousands of irregular pieces, making their rejoining a vital yet challenging step for understanding their content. Here we introduce WisePanda, a physics-driven deep learning framework designed to rejoin fragmented bamboo slips. Based on the physics of fracture and material deterioration, WisePanda automatically generates synthetic training data that captures the physical properties of bamboo fragmentations. This approach enables the training of a matching network without requiring manually paired samples, providing ranked suggestions to facilitate the rejoining process. Compared to the leading curve matching method, WisePanda increases Top-50 matching accuracy from 36% to 52% among more than one thousand candidate fragments. Archaeologists using WisePanda have experienced substantial efficiency improvements (approximately 20 times faster) when rejoining fragmented bamboo slips. This research demonstrates that incorporating physical principles into deep learning models can significantly enhance their performance, transforming how archaeologists restore and study fragmented artifacts. WisePanda provides a new paradigm for addressing data scarcity in ancient artifact restoration through physics-driven machine learning.